JAKUPSIL

Scott Reeder was born in Michigan and earned a BFA in Painting from the University of Iowa and an MFA in Painting from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Currently, he is a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Based in Chicago and Detroit, Reeder is renowned for his use of comedic and parodic devices that reference and subvert the history and culture of art making. His practice spans painting, sculpture, installation and film, blending language and image, convention and novelty, as well as high and low art. Reeder’s work prompts viewers to rethink familiar cultural and artistic norms and hierarchies, offering a fresh perspective on the absurdity of life, and ensuring a highly engaging viewing experience through his delicate use of color and deadpan humor. Reeder has exhibited extensively around the world, including a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2011, and in countries such as the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Italy. His works are in major collections such as Hirshhorn Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

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Humor serves not only to alleviate absurd reality but also to encourage unconventional thinking, challenging uncomfortable realms, especially within the art scene. Reeder emphasizes that humor is a great lure in attracting the viewer’s initial participation. Through laughter, viewers unwittingly transition from passive observers to active participants in the joke. Moreover, art can use humor as a subtle means to amplify social commentary - questioning the fundamentals of value and hierarchy. Sigmund Freud noted that humor is not resigned but rebellious in the face of despair. Reeder's works playfully approach the authority of art conventions and elite sensibilities with unexpected turns or reversals. The comical film, Moon Dust, set in futuristic lunar resorts, offers a dystopian narrative and ironic commentary on social class structures and American urban landscapes. Reeder's inventive public projects, like the Dark Fair - a miniature art fair devoid of natural or electric light - function as a relief, refusal, and resistance to the sole commercialism in art scene. Lights out at an art fair is, retrospectively, a fitting metaphor for what happened to the art market in the years that followed, and his cultural background as a Midwesterner.

Nicknamed the Midwestern Magritte, Reeder questions everything considered “normal” in daily life. He is particularly intrigued by the paradoxical and satirical elements of René Magritte's short-lived Période vache, an ironic allusion to the Fauves, where the paintings were unexpectedly crude and intentionally bad to undermine prevailing standards of painting. Unexpected twists subvert conventions, rendering ordinary moments bizarrely absurd. This subversive use of humor, as Jeff Koons notes, is a strategic tool integral to contemporary art.

Reeder’s exploration and experimentation with these established tropes embed a wide range of symbolic references from modern and contemporary art history, often now seen as clichés. A distinctive feature of his work is the engagement with the history of painting, and painting as a medium itself. The cartoonish subjects recalling Philip Guston, the Matissean red studio, Hockney's swimming pools, or Man Ray's rayogram-like negative space tracing the outline of scattered spaghetti, a critique extending to Jackson Pollock's all-over paintings using spray paint, and rejecting traditional brushwork. These works offer surreal parodies of art historical icons, addressing dichotomies such as abstraction versus representation and high versus low culture, while also reflecting a faith in modernist masters who questioned grand narratives of reason and order. Particularly notable are Martin Kippenberger, who navigated between bold humor and satirical object installations; Sigmar Polke, who explored the relationship between image and text without limiting his means of painting; and Milton Avery, with his stripped-down forms and vibrant colors. Loosely connected to the German Neo-Expressionists or the Bad Painting movement in America, Reeder persistently attempts to break free from the constraints of traditional painting and fixed notions. His work embodies complex layers of meaning, and through the lusciously sweet colors, seemingly cute images, and acute humor, he introduces a unique discourse into contemporary painting.